The Paradigm of Human-Environment Systems - Natural and Social ...

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Roland W. Scholz & Claudia Binder The Rationale of the Human-Environment Systems Paradigm Human-Environment Systems (HES) are conceptualized as a mutualism between two different systems that exist in essential dependencies and reciprocal endorsement. The HES-relationship is not symmetric, yet the mutuality is considered beneficial or necessary for existence for at least one of the two subunits of this system. Examples for mutualisms in different disciplines are: the predator-prey relationship in biology (Volterra, 1931), the mother-child connection in developmental psychology (Bowlby, 1951, 1982), or the doctor-patient relationship in medical sciences (Silverman, 1998). The term human systems has been used since the time of the ancient Greeks with re- spect to the meaning of social systems, ranging from society to individuals (Apostle, 1952). These systems are supposed to have a memory, language, foresight, consciousness etc. In contrast to the concept of human or social systems, the term environmental systems is not older than 200 years. The definition of environment as the “conditions under which any person or thing lives or is developed; the sum-total of influences which modify and determine the development of life or character” (Simpson & Weiner, 1989 p. 315) arose in the 19 th century, when environmental impacts of the industrial age could already be readily observed. Our notion of systems refers to J.F. Miller, who defines systems as “a set of related definitions, assumptions, and propositions that deal with ” cut-outs of“ reality as an integrated hierarchy of organizations of matter, energy”, and/or organisms (Miller 1978, p. 9). Because of the novelty of the term environmental system, research under the name environment is relatively new. Table 1 differentiates between one sided and mutual impact chains and between different viewpoints that dominate research on the human environment relationship. The E → H impact chain has predominantly been studied from the human perspective. Indeed, Hippocrates had already dealt with environmental impacts on human health in early medicine in 420 BC. Environmental psychology, for example, primarily focuses on “the influence of physical and social features on large-scale, everyday environments of human behavior and well-being” (Stokols, 2000, p. 220; see also Stokols & Altmann, 1987; Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The H → E impact chain was also initially examined from the human perspective. In the early 18 th century, forest engineers investigated how legal or economic restrictions affect the texture of forests (von Carlowitz, 1732). Agricultural, forest, and resource economics have evolved from these beginnings such that modern analyses focus on the question of how agricultural and forest yields can be most efficiently obtained (Goodwin, 1977; Drummond and Goodwin, 2001) From the environmental research perspective, the H → E impact chain has quite a different focus, namely how human activities affect the environment or environmental equilibrium and how these impacts can be mitigated (Wood, 1995, Freedmann, 1995). 2 April 2003
The Paradigm of Human-Environment Systems The reciprocity between human and environment systems, or the H ↔ E impact chains, can be approached from the environmental as well as from the human perspective. The former looks at optimizing environmental quality by integrating human models into ecosystem analysis (Naveh & Lieberman, 1994). The latter investigates the impact of regulatory mechanisms on the state of the environment, taking an anthropogenic perspective (Hammond, et al., 1995). For example, “human ecologists study the influence that our surroundings exert on the physical and social growth of humans from conceptus to death” (retrieved from the net, 13.02.03, Clarke, 2003; Tengström, 1985). A special focus is given to H∩E within the H ↔ E relationship. The GAIA approach (Lovelock, 1979) “views the earth as a single organism, in which the individual elements coexist in a symbiotic relationship. Internal homeostatic control mechanisms, involving positive and negative feedbacks, maintain an appropriate level of stability.” (Kemp, 1998, p.160) GAIA is an example of an integrative, qualitative approach for studying HES. Integrative modeling starts from coupled systems and provides a quantitative analysis (Bossel, 1998; Carpenter et al., 1999; Walker et al., 2002). Many of these modeling approaches are shaped by general system theory. Impact chain Table 1: Examples for research fields on HES according to the focused impact chain(s). Primary object of research Environment system Human system E → H — Toxicology, public health, environmental psychology, human geography, etc. H → E E ↔ H Environmental natural sciences (e.g., environmental chemistry); conservation biology, soil protection, Environmental Impact Assessment Integrative Ecosystems, Landscape ecology, Biocybernetics, etc. H∩E Agriculture, forest, food, and resource economics or management Human ecology, Pressure state models, etc. GAIA, General system theory, Integrative modeling, HES Most of the proponents of the various aforementioned integrative approaches (H∩E) operate either at a specific scale, (e.g., Carpenter et al., 2002, performed integrated modeling at a regional scale) or utilize one concept as the basis for their investigations and then integrate across scales, (e.g., general system theory, Miller, 1978). However, to our knowledge no systematic link of these two approaches, in particular, general system theory and integrative modeling, has been carried out. That is, the approaches either remain at one scale-level and investigate certain feedback loops or they identify different levels in a system hierarchy but neglect either the interaction among these levels or the feedback loops between the human and environmental system. ETH-UNS Working Paper 37 3
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